Sleep could save your teen’s life. A new study claims that kids who go to bed by 10 p.m. are less prone to be depressed or have suicidal thoughts.
Researchers found that teens whose parents insisted on a set bedtime were 25 percent less likely to be depressed and 20 percent less likely to have suicidal thoughts. The findings were culled from a database of 15,000 teens who participated in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.
“Teens who get less sleep may be more anxious and more likely to feel badly,” Dr. Jonathan Pletcher of Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh told HealthDay News. “But, I think this study’s findings also speak to a connection between the teen and their parents and their ability to work together.
Experts says that most teens should have at least eight to nine hours of sleep a night. Not getting enough can affect a child’s focus and learning and lead to obesity and type 2 diabetes. It can also affect moods and make a teenager more impulsive. All of which can lead to depression.
For tips on how to help your teen get a better night’s rest, click here.
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Paging Dr. Suess! A new study finds that kids ages three to eight really love being read to at bedtime, and the little bookworms would like more stories, mom and dad.
Almost two-thirds of kids surveyed said that they wished that their mother and father would spend more time reading to them. Kids ages three and four were the most hungry for more storytime, with three-quarters of them clamoring for it. And more than half of children ages 3 to 8 said that storytime was their favorite thing to do with their parents, Reuters reports.
“The results of our research confirm the traditional activity of storytelling continues to be a powerful learning and emotional resource in children’s lives,” said child psychologist Richard Woolfson, who conducted the study. “It can be very difficult for parents to find the time to read with their children, but these moments can help build strong bonds and play a vital part in their child’s development.”
Disney/Pixar commissioned the study, which also found that storytime ranked higher than TV or videogames among pasttimes for kids.
It’s touching that the world’s kids are eager to hear a whole stack of books at bedtime, but the cynical parent has to wonder how much that desire really has to do with a budding lust for literature. It could also be part of a savvy ploy to delay bedtime just a few more minutes.
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It’s so tempting to curl up with your sweet baby, but don’t do it. Ever.
Earlier this month, an infant was found dead while sleeping with his parents in St. Louis. Last year, unsafe sleeping practices — from co-sleeping to putting unnecessary toys in the crib — caused 19 babies to die in the city. That’s a jump from 14 in 2007 and eight in 2006, according to the Associated Press.
The trend echoes what is happening in Texas, which recently did a study on infant deaths. As Minor Troubles posted in December, co-sleeping is the leading cause of accidental death for babies in Texas, with a child dying nearly every other night.
When it comes to baby’s sleep, safety experts say parents should remember their ABC’s — babies should sleep Alone, on their Backs and in a Crib. If moms are too exhausted to put babies back in cribs or fall asleep during breast-feeding, one alternative is to put the crib right next to the bed.
Velma Harris Walker, who works for SIDS Resources of St. Louis, told the AP that parents are tempted to decorate cribs with toys, stuffed animals and excessive pillows. Moms think that the items are cute, but such things can suffocate infants. Walker said mothers should remember that what really makes a crib cute is simply “the baby inside.”
All it would take is an extra hour in the morning.
A new study shows that average crash rates for teen drivers dropped 16.5 percent in a school district in Kansas after a change in school start times. Meanwhile, teen crash rates for the rest of the state increased 7.8 percent. This was despite the fact that the county where the study occurred was rapidly developing and therefore usually prone to more accidents.
“It is surprising that high schools continue to set their start times early, which impairs learning, attendance and driving safety of the students,” head researcher Barbara Phillips told HealthDay News.
The researchers, from the University of Kentucky Healthcare Good Samaritan Sleep Center, say that teens often stay up late because of social and biological pressures. So they don’t get sufficient sleep when school starts early, resulting in daytime drowsiness and slow reflexes.
For the study, high school students in the Kansas district filled out surveys detailing their sleeping patterns. Researchers conducted the polls in 1998 and in 1999, before and after the school start times chanaged from 7:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. Between those two years, the number of teens who got at least eight hours of sleep jumped from 35.7 to 50 percent.
There are few things worse than waking in the middle of the night to the stomach-curdling scream of your sleeping child. Sleep terrors — the most abrupt and dramatic form of arousal disorder — can have precipitating factors that range from fever to nocturnal asthma. But a new study suggests that in as much as 40 percent of the cases, it may be genetic.
Researchers at Sacre-Coeur Hospital in Montreal studied data on 390 twin pairs, some identical and some fraternal, at 18 months and at 30 months. By comparing the prevalence of sleep terrors among the two types of twin pairs, they determined that 43.7 percent of a child’s risk was genetic at 18 months, and 41.5 percent of risk was genetic at 30 months, Reuters reported. In other words, it wasn’t something the parents had done wrong or even could have known about.
Sleep terrors, which are relatively common in very young children, are no ordinary nightmare. Attempts to rouse the child often increases his agitation. The researchers wrote in their report in the journal Pediatrics that environmental factors that were not shared by the twin pairs were responsible for the non-genetic part of the risk. They speculated that the twin who had sleep terrors may have undergone a prolonged hospitalization, have received medication or simply been a poorer sleeper.
Doctors recommend that parents allow sleep terrors to run their course. Moms and dads should be around, though, in case the child hurts herself unwittingly during the nightmare. For more info on child sleep disorders and how to deal with them, click here.
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Letting your infant sleep in your bed helps promote bonding, but a grim new report reveals that it also can be life-threatening. Nearly every other night in Texas, where the data was collected, a young child dies while sleeping with a parent or older sibling.
Texas Child Protective Services began researching the deaths last year after hearing isolated reports from caseworkers. It tallied 170 cases in a 12-month span, according to a report in the Houston Chronicle. While the agency declined to give exact causes of deaths, it acknowledged the primary risk for the child is suffocation. More than half the cases involved children younger than three months.
The Chronicle passed along some advice from protective services personnel to help minimize the risk:
– Don’t dull the senses by drinking alcohol or taking prescription drugs before sleeping in the same bed with a child.
– Avoid any soft bedding, loose bed pillows, loose throw pillows, blankets, or similar items which could impede a child’s breathing.
– Never sleep with a small child on a couch, waterbed or in a chair or recliner.
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The next time Junior resists getting out of bed, you might want to check that impulse to dump a bucket of water on his head. Well-rested kids are less likely to become obese adults.
That’s the conclusion of a new longterm study done at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, and reported in the journal Pediatrics. Researchers followed a thousand people from birth to age 32, and found those who got more rest when young had smaller body-mass indexes as adults. This was true even after controlling for such factors as childhood weight and TV habits.
“Inadequate sleep in childhood appears to have long-lasting consequences,” Dr. Robert John Hancox, the study’s senior author, told Reuters. It’s unclear exactly why, but one theory is that sleep deprivation alters the balance of appetite-stimulating and appetite-suppressing hormones.
Children under the age of 12 should get about 11 hours of sleep a night. Teenagers should have a minimum of about nine hours.
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Here’s some news that could help babies and parents sleep better: Following a flurry of product recalls, one of the United States’ biggest crib retailers is toughening its safety standards, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Implying that the federal government’s standards aren’t stringent enough, Toys ‘R’ Us and Babies ‘R’ Us, which sell hundreds of thousands of cribs a year, will now specify not only the type of trees suppliers can use in their cribs, but even the type of glue. The retailer will also dictate how the spindles of the crib must attach to crib railings.
In June, Toys ‘R’ Us recalled 320,000 cribs made by Jardine Enterprises after 42 families reported the spindles in the crib breaking, posing an entrapment and strangulation hazard to sleeping infants. Four babies became entrapped in the space created by a broken slat or spindle, and two children suffered abrasions and bruising.
Want your baby to get a better night’s sleep? Don’t be so blue.
Babies with moms who were depressed before or during pregnancy are more likely to have problems sleeping through the night, according to a new study from the University of Michigan. And even worse, the child is at a higher risk of developing depression later in life.
If you’re depressed, please get help, not just for your sake, but for your baby’s. Find out more about sleep patterns in babies here.
Want your teen to get a better night’s rest? Take the TV and the computer out of her bedroom.
That’s the take-away from a new study on the sleep habits of 444 middle-school children, average age 14. It found that kids who had a TV or computer in their bedroom went to sleep on average 30 minutes later than those who did not, but woke up at the same time.
Sorry Gossip Girl, you’ll just have to gossip in the living room.
